On 8 March 2024, the Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation recognised International Women’s Day as an opportunity to raise awareness and understanding of the global theme of Invest in women: Accelerate progress, and decided to connect it to the Allied Command Transformation’s annual campaign theme that focuses on the nexus between gender perspective, climate change and security.
This International Women’s Day event, focusing on the gender equality aspects of the theme, included senior leadership and staff engagement, providing an opportunity to raise awareness on implications for NATO’s future security environment and on how integrating gender perspective (as a the core method to implement and operationalize the NATO Women, Peace and Security framework), climate change and human security across all activities are key contributors to the NATO warfare development efforts, in order to prepare the Alliance to face today’s and tomorrow’s security challenges.
Using a featured visual of artwork painted for this occasion by a female artist living in Norfolk and learning tools (such as online quiz and information handout), the leadership and staff were informed of the importance to consider this thematic nexus and its connections to other warfare development activities. Reminded of the fact that women, men, girls and boys are impacted differently by crises and conflicts, participants discussed how climate change exacerbates pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities, and therefore contributes to generating future conflicts, with a disproportionate impact on women and girls, due to gender inequalities and different gender roles in societies. Finally, the importance of ensuring full and meaningful participation of women in the discussions, the decision-making, as well as in conflict prevention and management was emphasized, so women and men can be equally part of the planning and solutions for the safety and security of the Alliance.
Staff were also encouraged to brainstorm and to share ideas on “How Allied Command Transformation can accelerate progress for gender equality…”:
- in human rights?
- in supporting the shift to green economies and sustainable development?
- in achieving better gender balance and meaningful participation of women as decision-makers and leaders?
- in creating conditions for increasing women and girls’ participation as innovators and in the technology field?
Additionally, the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, General Philippe Lavigne, during his visit to Bulgaria, spent few hours at the Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence and was able to meet with gender advisors from the Center and the Bulgarian armed forces on International Women’s Day. The Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence is one of two NATO-accredited education and training facilities that provide the NATO-approved Gender Focal Point course as part of the NATO education and training solutions from the discipline on gender in military operations discipline, which was running in Sofia from 5-8 March 2024.
What’s next for Allied Command Transformation’s Annual Awareness Campaign?
As part of an annual raising campaign plan, Allied Command Transformation will continue to progress future initiatives in line with this year’s theme in the following areas:
- Staff raising awareness event with a panel of experts to discuss the nexus of gender, climate change and security, and implications for the future Military Instrument of Power.
- Continue raising awareness externally on NATO’s activities related to this topic by contributing to communications outputs on social media, in research reports and articles.
- Work with and invest services with women-led companies and organizations, when possible.
- Continue to progress Allied Command Transformation’s efforts related to climate change and loss of biodiversity, the future operating environment and layered resilience by considering how women, men, girls and boys can affect and are impacted by this evolving security environment.
- Support NATO’s implementation of climate change and security work strands, such as in the action plan, annual assessment and strategic foresight awareness. Furthermore, to support the Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence in its establishment phase, to ensure the NATO Women Peace and Security agenda and gender perspective are integrated into future programmes of work.
- Find opportunities to support initiatives connecting to women and girls in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, innovation and environmental challenges.
On that last point, we use the opportunity to remind the readers that on February 11th, the NATO Science and Technology Organization launch the “Women and Girls in Science 2024 challenge” aiming to inspire young women to pursue and/or further their careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Participants have until 21 April 2024 to submit a short research proposal addressing one of the following areas: energy security, climate change, human security and societal resilience.
The initial raising awareness webstory, along with the featured video describing the nexus between gender equality, climate change and security that was released on March 8th can be found here.
You can also hear from the Director of the newly established Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence, Mr. Mathieu Bussières, from his statement released in support of International Women’s Day and Allied Command Transformation’s annual awareness campaign theme.
Additionally, Allied Command Transformation is continuing to move forward initiatives derived from last year’s International Women’s Day theme on DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality. In particular, Allied Command Transformation is exploring how to further incorporate gender perspective into wargaming activities and continue its work with the Innovation Hub to propose the AzuritOwl Innovation project be developed as a ‘Minimum Viable Project’.
